Welcome!

As a lifelong model railroader, I'm glad to have this opportunity to write about this hobby that I have enjoyed so much. My start in this blog is a gift from my daughter Ann-Marie and her husband Brett, at the suggestion of my other daughter Jenny and her husband Craig, and I think it's a great idea! I hope that those who read this and view photos of my work will find it interesting and helpful. I know I've learned a lot and been inspired by others' work and the advice and information they've been kind enough to provide...and I'm still learning.

I'm a firm believer in Model Railroader magazine's longtime adage, "Model Railroading Is Fun." And, as one writer put it, "this is a hobby and not a religion." My personal approach is to strive for an accurate, scale representation of prototype railroading, faithful to locale and era. However, that's only one way to go about this hobby; for example, many years ago I visited a Seattle man's layout that "broke all the rules," that was quite a mixture of equipment, eras and even scales! And I've never seen anybody enjoy a layout more than that man did his! That's an important lesson.

Now, briefly, about me. I've been married to Susie for nearly 36 years, a VERY patient woman who has always encouraged me in my hobby. We're both Pacific Northwest natives and, until about a year ago, had always lived in that region, most recently in Boise, Idaho. Our daughters and their husbands relocated to the Houston area in 2008 and kindly suggested we do likewise. We did, and we sure like being close to them and our two granddaughters, Hayley and Emily.

I got started in this hobby at age 6 months when my Dad brought home an American Flyer S gauge train set, and I've stuck with it ever since, though now I model in S scale rather than "tinplate." Over the years I've tried to improve my modeling skills, and now I handlay my track and do quite a bit of scratchbuilding as well.

When we moved I of course dismantled my layout, which represented a small northern Idaho town in 1939 on a "freelance" short line typical of the area. Now I've just begun construction on a layout that will be set in a small Texas Gulf Coast port; I'm still nailing down the era, but I think I'm going to settle on 1947. I'll talk more about that decision in a later post.